Harnessing the power of the sun has been on the top of many scientists’ lists for quite some time. It’s just hanging out up there, making everything warm, so it’s a seemingly endless supply of wireless energy. The problem is, we haven’t been able to make them cheap, powerful, or light enough to make them economically feasible. A team of researchers believes they solved one of those problems as they’ve revealed a solar cell so light that it can rest on a soap bubble without popping it.

MIT, where the researchers reside, is certainly no stranger to developments affecting the construction industry, as made evident by their recent discoveries like reversible concrete, how concrete works on a molecular level, and visually capturing the motion of cranes. MIT professor Vladimir Bulovic, research scientist Annie Wang, and doctoral student Joel Jean published their report about the ultra-light solar cell in a journal titled Organic Electronics. The key, says Bulovic, is that the solar cell, the supporting substrate, and the protective layer over top of the solar cell are built all in one process. By doing so, external contaminants never have a chance to touch the solar cell, greatly increasing the time it will take to degrade, which increases efficiency and lifespan. Their discovery is only a proof of concept and will undoubtedly take several years to be produced commercially, if it ever does.

While the thought of a solar cell sitting on top of a soap bubble is impressive enough, quantifying the actual size is incredible. The final cell is just 1/50th the thickness of a human hair and 1/1000th as thick as comparable solar cells made with glass substrates. Despite its comparably tiny size, the researchers say it’s just as efficient as its other small counterparts. It’s not as efficient as heavier, typical silicon-based solar modules, but its wattage production by weight blows it out of proportion, producing almost 400 times more per kilogram.

Light solar cells are especially important in applications where weight is really important, light aerospace technologies, but the opportunities are endless for the construction industry. Our job sites require tons of power, from tools, to lighting, to equipment. If we could use the sun’s energy for those applications without increasing the weight, we could simultaneously charge our job site items, while also not increasing fatigue of our workers. Win-win.

Tall buildings made with structural timber have been on the rise in Canada and European countries in recent years, but the United States has been slower to adopt the method due to code restrictions. The state of Oregon recently released an addendum to their building code to allow taller mass timber buildings in the state and an upcoming International Code Council (ICC) vote could encourage more states to follow suit.

You may have been sitting in your house or office one day and noticed the distinct sound of a bird hitting the window. It’s pretty common, as it’s estimated that as many as 988 million birds die in the US each year by colliding into glass. The new arena that will house the NBA’s Milwaukee Bucks has incorporated some design elements that will reduce the amount of birds killed by the massive structure, allowing it to be dubbed the “World’s Most Bird Friendly Sports Arena.”

Dubai has been on the bleeding edge of pushing the boundaries of construction for over a decade. The famous Burj Khalifa, the current World’s Tallest Building, but the United Arab Emirates on the map. Since then, the country has poured money and resources into the construction industry and have sets their sights on a new challenge: 3D construction printing.

Across the United States, any mass timber building designed to be taller than six stories high has to receive special approval from the building codes department. After a recent addendum was added to the Oregon’s building code, the state has become the first in the country to allow high rise mass timber buildings without receiving any special considerations.

Since the dawn of green buildings, these projects have always been synonymous with LEED certification. The process of obtaining that LEED certification has not always been an easy one for contractors; there is a ton of paperwork and documentation that needs to take place in order to prove all LEED credits have been rightfully earned. A new construction standard, called BREEAM, is hoping to disrupt the United States’ green building certification world with its impending New Construction Standard Release in 2019.

One of the biggest hassles of site work in construction is the hauling away of spoils. It’s costly and time consuming to bring in truck after truck to take unneeded soil off to an unknown dump site. When Elon Musk and his team, The Boring Company, started digging a tunnel for a HyperLoop system in Los Angeles, they knew there had to be a better way to handle to soil than to haul it away.

With much talk about climate change both politically and socially, citizens and the business world have started to calculate the way in which climate change will alter how we live and work. In the past, the construction industry has made a number of speculations about how it would change as the planet gets warmer, however, changes have only started coming in light of the rising temperatures and their effects on the industry.

The USGBC recently released their 2017 data for the Top 10 US States for LEED construction, which is sorted by Gross Square Footage per Capita. That ranking system allows them to get a fair comparison of states, despite differences in population and number of buildings.

As the world not only becomes more familiar with green products, but also starts demanding them, researchers and contractors alike need to be ready to embrace the ever-changing world and meet their customer’s demands. Each year, new products are released that hoping to reduce waste or harness renewable energy sources, but only some of them reach the mass market.

Below are 8 green products, processes, and stories that we found most interesting in 2017:

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